5 Laws of Presentations

Law #1: The understanding, attention and retention of your audience is inversely proportional to the length of your presentation.
The longer your presentation, the lesser your audience pays attention, remembers and understands. Keep your presentation as short as possible.


Law #2: A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a thousand pictures.
Sometimes just one picture is equal to a paragraph full of words. A video is even more powerful. It an audio visual medium and engages the audience better than even pictures. Stop your reliance on plain text. Make it interesting and entertaining with pictures and videos.


Law #3: The power of a slide is inversely proportional to the amount of words on the slide.
The more words on the slides, the worse the slide becomes. Great slides are low on text. Bad slides are text heavy.

Law #4: Effective delivery of your presentation is directly proportional to the amount of practice you have put in.
The more you rehearse, the better you deliver the presentation. The more you practice, the more confident you become. There are no naturally born presenters. Practice is the difference between great and average presenters.

Law #5: Your audience mirrors you.
Your audience mirrors your behavior and state of mind. If you are positive, passionate and confident, your audience feels the same way. If you enjoy the joke you just made, your audience will enjoy the same. A nervous presenter makes the audience uncomfortable too.

4 Powerful Tips to 'Influence' your Audience

We make presentations to influence our audience. The salesman wants the buyer to say yes. The trainer wants the new employee to understand. The manager wants the CEO to agree with her strategy.

We are in the business of influencing others and these 4 tips will help you do that better. These strategies are part of the best-selling book 'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion' by Dr. Robert B Cialdini. These 4 tips will make you a much better influencer in life.

1. Power of written commitments: Making people write down makes them more committed to the cause. If you want your audience to commit to something, do not just make them say it loud. Make them write it down. They are more likely to fulfill it now. There is something magical about writing.

2. Be likable: People do business with people they like. You buy from the salesman you like. This is a fact. As a presenter, when you are selling your ideas, you need to start by becoming more likable.

Does your audience like you? If they don't, they are very less likely to agree to your point of view. And how does one become more likable? Go back to Dale Carnegie. Take genuine interest in others. Like others first. Spend time to understand them and understanding what appeals to them. This brings us to the point: As a presenter, spend time understanding your audience. Like them and take interest in them. Work genuinely towards helping your audience through the presentation. If you do this, your audience will like you too.

3. Scarcity creates demand: What is less easily available becomes more desirable. If you can create the sense of urgency in the audience, they are more likely to say yes. This is why deals which last a day or two are more successful. If you do not buy today, you will never get the 75% off. So rush!

4. The contrast principle: How something is perceived depends on the context. It depends on the nature of the event that came before it. To make you like a deal more, the salesman might offer a not-so-good deal first. This makes you like the actual deal more. When you make your arguments in your presentation, make sure you set the context right. You provide the right contrast without misusing this trick.

Learning Pyramid

I came across this pyramid at Jan Schultink's blog. Ignore the percentages and just look at it as a hierarchy (an order of effective to less effective). We (and that includes our audience) learns most by teaching others. This is followed by practice, then discussion and finally lecture.

What does this mean for presenters like us?
If we lecture in our next presentation our audience will not remember much. If we add a bit of demonstration, the learning will become better. Demonstration reminds me of Steve Jobs. In most of his presentations we find a demo.

There is something else we can do; Discussion. When we discuss a topic with our audience, they learn more than when we give a one-way lecture. I feel this is a significant point. If we can move from one-way communication to a two-way discussion, our presentations will become more effective.

Much ado about... logo

The CEO of a company is making a presentation to prospective investors. He calls me to his desk saying 'its important'. His doubt:

"All my slides have my company logo except 3 slides. What is the problem with these 3 slides?" My response to this question was... "3 of your slides do not have your company logo, what is wrong with the balance 17 slides?"

Why do we fuss so much about a logo? You are presenting to another CEO and seeking millions of dollars of investment and all that bothers you is your missing logo on 3 slides. Much ado about nothing.

3 Tips that will Dramatically Improve your Presentation Skills

There are zillions of presentation tips in this world. My own blog has more than 460 posts and I must have shared more than 100 tips by now. Every tip is meant to make you a better presenter.

But it is not possible for you to follow all the tips in your next presentation. Hence, I present to you just 3 tips. I believe some tips are more powerful than others. If you follow just these 3 tips in the next presentation you make, you will drastically improve as a presenter.

Why? Because these three tips address the biggest weaknesses we have as presenters. They are also related to the most important part of making a presentations.

#1 Practice. Practice. Practice.
Rehearse your presentation before you deliver it to your audience. Rehearse it at least 5 to 10 times. Rehearse it as you would present it eventually. So stand up and start talking. Most presenters never rehearse their presentations this way, and end up fumbling. The ideas do not flow properly. They forget what comes on the next slide. It becomes extempore and you end up reducing the power of your presentation. You worked so hard to make the presentation, but your delivery suffers because of lack of practice.

If you practice your next presentation at least 5 times (and incorporate the changes that you might have to make post this rehearsal), you will become a 100% better presenter.

#2 Plan in analog. Ditch your computer.
Most presenters think on the computer. They start working on the presentation by opening their software (PowerPoint or Keynote). This is the wrong strategy.

Start planning your content on paper (or whiteboard). Get complete clarity on what you want to say. Write down the crux of your content on paper. Now get the flow of the presentation as well. Even plan out what kind of visual or graph is needed on which slide. Once everything is ready, now focus on making slides. This will help you save time in making slides. It will also help you get complete clarity on your content.

Computer is good for editing not for thinking. Do not overestimate the power of your computer.

#3 Avoid bullets, replace loads of text with visuals.
The third and final tip is about how we go about making our slides. We fill it up with list of bullet points and we end up writing a lot more than we should. We do not make our presentation visual enough.

Visuals (such as photos or graphs) make it convenient for our audience to understand and remember our message. So do two things: 1) Avoid using bullet points and 2) Use very less text on each slide. Try using more and more visuals.

Do not use slides as a crutch to remember your content. If you practice your presentation, you will be able to afford less text on your slide.

I thought about these 3 tips while I was driving my way back home. Later I realized something interesting about these tips. There are three stages of making a presentation; 1) Plan your content, 2) Design your slides and 3) Deliver your presentation. Each of the tip relates to one part of this process. Tip #1 is about delivery. Tip #2 is about planning and tip #3 is about slide design. Together these tips improve every aspect of our presentation.

Good, Fast & Cheap

You can only have two of the three.

If it is good and fast, it cannot be cheap.
If it is good and cheap, it cannot be fast.
If it is fast and cheap, it cannot be good.

Thanks Vijay Gopal for sharing this. True words of wisdom on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

7 Challenges you face in every presentation you make

1. Get your audience to pay attention to what you are saying.

2. Retain their attention throughout your presentation. The longer the presentation, the tougher this becomes.

3. Get your audience to understand your message.

4. Get your audience to remember what you said. This is even tougher.

5. Get your audience to believe what you are saying.

6. Get your audience to care about what you are saying. You might be passionate about environment but your audience might not be.

7. Get your audience to actually act on your message. Get them to do what you want them to do. In a sales context, it will mean getting them to buy. In a sponsorship context, it mean getting the cheque from the sponsor.

To summarise, these 7 challenge are: Get attention, retain attention, understand, remember, believe, care and act. These thoughts are from the classic book 'Made to Stick' (my all time favourite). While this book is about communication in general, we will look at the learning from this book in the context of presentations.

Is each challenge equally challenging?
Think about the last presentation you made. Look at each challenge and ask yourself if you faced it. You must have. However, did you face each challenge in equal measure?

Keystone Habit of Presenters

Last week I read a very interesting book. It is called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The book talks about how habits form and how they can be changed. In our life, most things we do are not thought. We do it without thinking. They have become a habit. Charles also shares one interesting concept in his book. It is called 'Keystone Habit'.

He says, some habits are more important than other habits. These keystone habits, if changed in turn influence all other habits and transform the individual. Example, for some people going to the gym or doing Yoga is a keystone habit. If such a person starts going to the gym, he also becomes careful of what he eats. He will start going to office early and he becomes more punctual in his life. He might also start working more seriously and take less breaks at work.

We all have our keystone habits.

After reading the book, I started to apply it to making presentations. When we asked to make a presentation, we do a lot of things out of habit. We don't even think about it.

Some people waste hours choosing the right template. Others might spend too much time in slide beautification. We all have things we constantly do. We know they are not adding much value but we continue doing them. Sometimes we might not even know we are stuck in such habits which are wasting our time and making us less productive.

In the context of presentations, I believe the keystone habit for most presenters is 'rehearsal'. Most people do not rehearse before their final presentation. If you can change just this habit and start rehearsing, it will positively affect all other habits related to presentations. Think about it.

Rehearsal is a very powerful thing. When you rehearse your presentation, you touch all other aspects of your presentation. You get a chance to set the flow right. You can come up with new and better content and better arguments. You can check on your slide design and animation. You can get thoughts on how you can shorten your presentation without losing its effectiveness.

Rehearsal is a keystone habit. In order to become a better presenter, do just one thing now. Start rehearsing before every presentation. Rehearse at least 5 to 10 times and see how it transforms you into a much superior presenter.

To rehearse is to do a mock run. You can do it alone or present to a friend/colleague. You stand up, put the PPT in slideshow mode and present it as you would do eventually to your audience.

3 Reasons why you must practice your presentation early on

Presentation wisdom suggests the following process for making any presentation. Plan your content -> Make your slides -> Practice your delivery with the set of slides. This model, which is recommended by so many experts, is wrong.

Practice is required at the last, once your slides are fully ready. But practice is also required in the middle. As soon your first basic set of slides is ready, you need to practice.

Stand up and present the slides the way you will do to the audience. Don't worry about the finishing touches. Your slides are average looking and your tables needs to be touched up. That perfect picture is still eluding you. All this decoration is for later stages. Just stand up and talk as if this is the real thing.

Practice at this early stage has 3 benefits:

1. It helps you get the flow of slides right.
2. It helps you eliminate redundant slides. It helps you edit your presentation.
3. It gives you new answers and ideas (which you had missed out during the initial planning stage).

Last week I gave an important presentation to an audience of 100. After I made my initial slides I started presenting (rehearsing in my hotel room). I stood up, took my wireless presenter and started talking.

I figured out that my flow of slides was not right at few places. When I was talking, I got a flow which was much more logical and the slides did not fit in. Hence I made changes to my slides. Move them forward and back to fit the new narrative (storyline).

I also realised that a few slides could be removed as they were not so important. Removing slides is great because it cuts down the duration of the presentation. The shorter the better.

I practised 3-4 times and during these multiple rounds I came up with some new arguments and points which my initial set of slides had lacked. The practice helped me come up with better content.

For your next presentation, plan out your content. Make a quick first draft of the slides. Practice your presentation 3 times. You can always add better images later. Make tables look better later. First practice, so that you can freeze on your content and the flow of your slides.

Ode to Joy

If you need to relax before setting out to plan your presentation, listen to 'Ode to Joy' by Beethoven. It will surely calm your mind. I love it and you will too.

Do 20% of your slides give 80% of the results?

Pareto Principle is a famous management principle which states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In business it is observed that 80% of sales come from 20% of customers. 80% of work is done by 20% people. This is also referred to as the 80-20 principle. In my career as a sales manager and marketing manager I too have seen this principle working.

Do you think this principle applies to your presentation as well? Do 20% of your slides provide 80% of the results?

Go back to the last few PPTs you have made. How many slides were there? If your PPT had 25 slides, identify the most important 5 slides (20%). Do you think these slides contained 80% of the message and (more importantly) they created 80% of the impact. Think about it.

If you think its true (which it is) then can you do the following:

1. Focus on these 20% slides and prepare them well.
2. While rehearsing your presentation, give special emphasis and more time to these slides.

In every presentation you make from now on, decide which are those slides which give you 80% results. While preparing these slides spend extra time. While delivering these slides, give extra emphasis and take extra effort.

What happens if your time is cut short by the organisers. You can just present these 20% slides and still make 80% of the impact.

You will not...

You will not read the slides while presenting because your audience is literate. What you can read, we can read too. You are not here to read your slides. If you had to read your slides, why did you come all the way. You should have emailed your slides.

You will not sit at your desk and present. Get up and move. How are you going to connect with me if you sit all the while on your seat behind your laptop? Show some energy and passion. Get up you lazy fellow.

You will not look at the slides while presenting. Look at me for God sake. You have come to present to yourself or to me? I am not going to like you, if you do not even look at me.

You will not make slides which look like text books (full of text and full of bullet points). I am sick of it. Don't kill me. Show me something fresh. Show me something worth looking at. And stop making your slides your crutch.

This is so important, it is worth repeating. We need to be reminded of the basics always. I got reminded of this because I attended one such presentation today.

"It's 12 degrees here."

I am on a holiday. I am in my home town right now. When I was packing my bags, my father called me to suggest we get some winter clothing (jackets, sweater, etc). He said it was cold here. He said, "It's 12 degree here." Hyderabad (where I work) was pretty warm then.

When I landed here, reality struck. I was freezing. Coming from Hyderabad where winter was looking more like summer, this was a shock. Then my father smiled and said, "I told you it was 12 degrees here."

It is getting cooler by the day. Today's newspaper reads, "Yesterday was the coldest day in the last 28 years. It was 10 degrees yesterday."

When I was in Hyderabad I could not make much sense of what 12 degrees meant. I could not visualise. Was 12 degree too cold or just nice cold?

Well, the problem is, numbers are dry and do not make much of a sense on their own. It is like saying the GDP of India is $1.85 Trillion or the per capita income of India is $1219. What do I do with that? I cannot take any action based on this figure because I do not fully understand it.

The next time you need to tell your dear ones it's very cold, resist the temptation to say "It's 12 degrees here." Better say, "It's freezing down here and we have not seen such cold weather in the last decade." People will act more upon the latter than the former.

Whatever be the weather in your city, continue to have fun. Have a happy and fun filled new year.

Why sharing facts is not enough

What do you say when a new slide come up in your presentation. The facts. That's it or something more?

"75% of the smart phones in the world run on Android" or "India imports more than 50% of its requirement of cooking oil" or "Our product's sales went up 5% last quarter even though the prices were up 15%."

You then move on to the next slide and say what's on the next slide.

This is incomplete. For every slide you make, you need to look at three things:

1. The Fact
2. What's your point?
3. Why should the audience care?

Most of the times points 2 and 3 are obvious to you but not to the audience. After having shared the facts, you need to give the meaning to the audience. What's your point? So what is it that you really want us to know (after having shared the fact).

"Our product's sales went up 5% even though the prices were revised upwards 15% means? What is the point you are making? Should we increase prices again or reduce prices since 5% could have been 20% if the prices did not go up."

Even more important is "Why should the audience care?" Just because you share a fact, does not mean I have to listen to it or take action based upon it. Is it relevant to the overall message of your presentation? Why are you sharing this fact and its meaning? If you answer "Why should the audience care?" you will never have unwanted stuff on your slide.

This is one of the many things I have learnt from the book, Presentation Zen.

3 Things PowerPoint is NOT

#1 PowerPoint is not a tool for document creation
#2 PowerPoint is not always necessary
#3 PowerPoint is not the most important thing in your presentation

These views are from the book Presentation Zen (by Garr Reynolds). It is the most popular book on presentations and a must read. Let us understand what Garr has to say about the three things above.


#1 PowerPoint is not a tool for document creation

Look at any slide deck and you find a long list of bullet points in 12 size font. We use PowerPoint as if it is a report creation tool. What happens when we present our slides like this? "Death by PowerPoint." Intense suffering. Everyone hates sitting through a presentation. It is because we put up a slide and then start speaking. Our audience is reading the slide and also trying to listen to us. It's all a mess.

The Solution: Give a document to your audience which contains everything you want to say. Free your slides from text. Make it highly visual with very few words per slide. This way, the audience will not waste time reading your slide. They will focus on you and listen to you.

#2 PowerPoint is not always necessary
You need to make a presentation always means you need to come with slides. That's not true. Most of the popular TED talks have no slides at all. Just because you are asked to share your thoughts does not mean you will need a slide.

The Solution: Slides amplify your idea. If slides will really help you make your argument better or narrate your story better, use them. If not, present without them.

#3 PowerPoint is not the most important thing in your presentation

Most of us put PowerPoint above us. We feel the slides are why the audience has come. This view needs to change. The audience has come to listen to you and not to see the slides. If you have slides, use them as a support. You are the focus of your presentation and not the slides.

Presenters who switch off the lights when presenting suffer from this problem. By switching off the light, you make yourself useless. Keep the lights on and take centre stage.

If you ask any of the following questions, you are asking the wrong questions.

Q. How many slides should my presentation have?

Q. How much time should I spend on each slide?

Q. Which font is better for a presentation?

Q. Should I use animations and transitions?

Q. Should I use Keynote or PowerPoint or Prezi?

Worry about these questions at the last. What matters first is what you have to say (your message) and how are you going to say it so that it is memorable and effective.

PowerPoint is just a tool to help you present better. Use it properly.

Brain Rules for Presenters - #10 Vision

This is the second post about the book Brain Rules by John Medina. In the last post I talked about what John Medina has to say about 'Attention' and what it means for presenters. In this post I will cover his tenth rule; 'Vision'.

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses

What the book says:

1. Vision dominates all other senses.

2. Vision is the best tool to learn anything. John Medina says, "The more visual the input becomes, the more likely it is to be recognized - and recalled." This phenomenon is called the pictoral superiority effect (PSE).

3. We pay a lot of attention to moving objects.

4. We see with our brains. We see what our brain thinks is out there. The reality can be slightly different.

What this means for presenters:

Make our presentations more visual: John Medina clearly says that vision dominates all other senses. There are three ways our audience takes in information during our presentation; they listen, they read and they see. Brain researchers have found that learning by seeing is far better than learning by reading or learning by hearing. Today our presentations are heavy on text. We need to start using more of visuals. We can use photographs, charts and infographics.

Medina further says, "If information is presented orally, people remember about 10%, tested 72 hours after exposure. That figure goes up to 65% if you add a picture."

The challenge for us is to start using more of visuals. The challenge is to start converting our slides full of text into visuals. The next time we have a slide which has only text, we can ask ourselves "How do I convert this into a visual?"

Use animations: We pay special attention when any object is in motion. This implies we should use some animations in our presentations. Do not overdo it but start using it. If there is a process chart, showing the elements one by one (using animation) is better than showing the entire chart at one go. We must use videos in our presentations. Videos are highly visual and will capture the attention of our audiences. Three years back I had attended Dr. Stephen Covey's workshop in Hyderabad. He had used a lot of videos. For every topic he spoke about, he had a video to back it up. Sure, he knew the value of videos.

Just look at slides 41 and 42 of the following presentation to see how a table can be made into a nice diagram.

7 tips to create visual presentations from Emiland

Brain Rules for Presenters - #4 Attention

I am currently reading Brain Rules by John Medina. It is an excellent book about how our brain works and it has important lessons for everyone. John Medina is a molecular biologist who has shared 12 rules about how our brain works. He calls these brain rules. His rules are based on proper research. I will be sharing some of these rules here which are relevant for presenters. This is the first post about this book.

Rule #4 Attention: We don't pay attention to boring things

What has John Media said:

1) If we pay complete attention, we learn better. We remember better and remember more accurately.

2) Our attention span is only 10 minutes.

3) We pay attention to things we can relate to. We pay attention to things we like or are important to us. We pay attention to something unusual or unexpected. We pay attention when we get emotional. John Medina says, "Emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events." This basically means that emotions get our attention.

4) We remember only the meaning or the gist of something. We do not remember too many details.

What it means for presenters and speakers:

The 10 minute rule: As presenters we need to remember that our audience will not be able to pay attention for more than 10 minutes. So we must try to present within 10 minutes. In case it is not possible, we must try to do something in the 10th minute of our presentation in order to buy another 10 minutes of our audience. Here are a few suggestions: a) Play a video just when the 10 minute mark is coming. b) Give a task to the audience. Some kind of exercise. c) Share a story with them. d) Invite a different speaker on stage. What all you can do will vary from presentation to presentation. Just remember that if something is not done in the 10th minute, you will lose your audience. Since they are not paying attention any more, they will not remember anything you say.

Meaning before details (Point 4 above): As per John Medina the brain seeks meaning first. Hence we must share the gist of the concept first to our audience. If you are a teacher and you are teaching a new topic. First give them a summary of what it is. Then add details on top of it.

Appeal to emotions: In order to get maximum attention of your audience, you need to touch them emotionally. Make them feel something. Fear, love, happiness, nostalgia, make them laugh or make them cry. Add this emotional angle to your presentation (even if it is a business presentation). Sales presentations can be passionate which gives your team members goosebumps. If you are an NGO, you can share a story of a girl your NGO is helping. What she has been through and how much she is in need of help. It is all about making your presentation more human.

Know your audience: We pay attention to things we can relate to. We pay attention to things we like or find important. As presenters, if we know what our audience likes and what is important to them, we can use it to get their attention. Examples and stories used in our presentation will be more 'relevant' and will thus get more attention. When teaching a class of Indian marketing students, should you give examples of Indian brands or American? The more we know our audience, the better we can customise our presentation.

Brain Rules by John Medina is highly recommended for everyone. Click here to buy/know more: Amazon (US) HomeShop18 (India) Amazon (UK).

Fresh or Consistent: Which one will you choose?

Which one will you choose?
Fresh or consistent. Something that's changing (so it does not get boring) or something that's about the same time after time. In the context of a presentation, think about it like this.


You have a PPT with 10 bar graphs on 10 slides. Would you:
a. Present all 10 graphs in exactly the same way?
b. Present some bar graphs in a different colour scheme (to ensure it does not get boring)? or
c. Present some bar graphs vertically (the default option) and make some bar graphs go horizontal (right to left). There can be some 3D as well :-)
d. Both b & c


Which one would you choose? Which one do you usually choose?

Are you living in "Default Land"?

Default (noun): A particular setting or value for a variable that is assigned automatically by an operating system and remains in effect unless cancelled or overridden by the operator: changed the default for the font in the word processing program. (source)


If you are going ahead with the default settings of MS PowerPoint then you are living in Default Land. And living in default land is not going to help you at all. To become better at making presentations, the first step you must take is to come out of your default land and explore.


How do you know if you are living in default land?
Go back to your last few PPT slides and ask these questions:

• Did I go ahead with Calibri, the default font?
• Did I choose a template for my presentation or went ahead with the normal white stuff?
• Did I choose the template I always choose or tried something new?
• Did I change the colour, alignment or fonts of my data table?
• Did I change the font size of my text?
• Did I change the alignment of my text?
• Did I change the legend, look and feel of my charts? Did I change the line colour and make it thicker?

The list is endless but you get the point. Every time you do anything in your PPT, if you are going ahead with the default choice (the choice which your software does for you) ask yourself if you like it. Ask yourself, can I change it and make it better? You will be pleasantly surprised that the default is so much boring and mundane. To become better, the first step is to challenge the status quo (the default). Come out of your Default Land.

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'. - Ronald Reagan

David Ogilvy on Presentations

David Ogilvy is considered "The Father of Advertising". His writings on advertising are popular across the world. I came across his short note "10 Tips on Writing by David Ogilvy" today and could not resist sharing it here. His tips on writing can as well be applied to presentations. Just replace the word 'write' with 'present' and 'writing' with 'presenting'.


---
"The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:


1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning - and then edit it.
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don't write. Go and tell the guy what you want."


David
---


Check out the Roman-Raphaelson book on Amazon & flipkart.


The lessons I draw as a presenter from these tips are as under. The number before every paragraph relates to that tip by David Ogilvy.


2. Present the way you normally talk. Do not put on an accent. Do not talk fast. Look people into the eye. While you are presenting, you should be your normal self.


3. Use less words on your slides. Speak less but mean more. Do not keep on talking and do not fill your slides with text.


4. Never use jargon in your presentations. You might want to sound 'cool' or like an expert but it does not help. Be clear and simple to your audience.


5. Never make lengthy presentation. Be brief and to the point. The more you say, the less people care and remember.


7. Never be in a hurry to send in (email) your PPT to the recipient. If you have worked late night on the slides, check them again the next morning and edit them. Never go into a presentation without rehearsal.


8. If you are working on an important presentation, take help from colleagues and friends. They will give you feedback which will help you. Let them critique your presentation.


9. You must be very sure what is the objective of your presentation. What do you want the audience to do after the presentation and why? This will bring clarity to your thoughts.


Not to forget, good presentation skill is not a natural gift. You have to learn to present well. Very well said David.


Thanks to my friend Nirav for sharing the link on FB.